The Forger's Spell - Edward Dolnick [70]
On July 10, 1935, to the button-popping pride of the good citizens of Rotterdam, the new museum opened its doors. To celebrate the opening, Hannema had put together a blockbuster show called “Vermeer—Origins and Influences.” This was the first show focused entirely on Vermeer, and in the words of the art historian Ben Broos, it offered Delft’s great painter “what to many had long seemed his by right: eternal fame.”
The show included a total of 130 paintings. Towering above the others were 15 Vermeers, representing nearly half the world’s total and lent by such institutions as the Louvre, the Met, and London’s National Gallery. Never in living memory, boasted Hannema, had so many Vermeers been gathered together. One hundred thousand enthralled visitors gazed at the masterpieces. The catalog, written by Hannema, spelled out Vermeer’s place in the pantheon. “Next to Rembrandt,” museumgoers read, “the figure of Vermeer rises above all other artists of the great age of the 17th century.” Hannema’s enthusiasm boiled over. “Each creation [of Vermeer’s] forms a polished and complete entirety…. Intellect and emotion are in perfect balance.”
There was only one problem, though few suspected it at the time. Of the fifteen Vermeers that Hannema had assembled, six were not Vermeers at all. One of the six was rejected almost as soon as Hannema proclaimed its importance. This was a painting called Mary Magdalene Under the Cross, which Hannema, in his catalog, proudly “attributed here, for the first time, to Vermeer.” The doubters surfaced immediately. A Dutch art historian argued in the newspapers that the picture was by the French painter Nicolas Tournier. In their Vermeer books in 1939, the scholars De Vries and Plietzsch simply ignored Mary Magdalene, as they had ignored Bredius’s Harpsichord.
By the time Hannema put together his show celebrating Vermeer and his new museum, Van Meegeren was deep into his forging career. But if Van Meegeren needed encouragement, Hannema’s exhibition served as proof that his timing was perfect. (And Hannema’s personal endorsement of Mary Magdalene gave any forgers who happened to be listening a remarkable hint—a new, biblical Vermeer might go over nicely.)
It was not just that the hoopla pushed Vermeer’s reputation, already high, to a new peak. More than that, Hannema had practically auditioned for a spot next to Bredius as dupe-in-waiting. First, his blockbuster show all but proclaimed that he happened to be one of the people in all the world most eager to find a new Vermeer. Better still, his position as director of a museum that was striving for fame meant he was ideally placed to unveil any newfound masterpiece on an international stage. Best of all, as his profoundly flawed homage revealed, Dirk Hannema didn’t know what a real Vermeer looked like.
31
THE CHOICE
For Van Meegeren in the thirties, the decision to focus on Vermeer had long been made. But what kind of Vermeer should he forge? When Harpsichord failed on liftoff, Van Meegeren decided that what was called for was not a better imitation, not a more lustrous rendering of pearl earrings or a more luxuriously blue gown, but a painting that was not pieced together from known Vermeers. He would paint not merely a new Vermeer but a new kind of Vermeer.
He came up with a picture called Christ at Emmaus. “It is unique in the history of faking,” the art critic and historian John Russell observed, “in being quite unlike any known painting by its supposed creator.” Venturing so far from Vermeer’s familiar paintings had two advantages. First, it let Van Meegeren sidestep the hazards of the Uncanny Valley. The second was more personal. Van Meegeren was driven not merely by greed but by ambition and vanity. To fool the world with a “Vermeer” that was to a large